Anderson & Sheppard

Anderson & Sheppard was founded in 1906. Its defining contribution to the history of tailoring is the London drape cut — a method of construction developed principally by Per Anderson, the house's founding master cutter, who arrived from Sweden with a sensibility formed outside the English tradition and therefore unconstrained by its assumptions.

The drape cut is characterised by a deliberate fullness through the chest — cloth gathered in a soft fold across the breast, falling without the structured pressing that conventional Savile Row construction requires — and by a lapel that rolls continuously from the collar to the button in an uninterrupted curve, never sharply creased. The shoulder is soft. The canvas floats rather than being pressed against the cloth.

This is not a softer version of a structured jacket. It is a different kind of jacket, built on a different logic.

Three Traditions Compared

Understanding the drape cut requires placing it against its alternatives.

The structured Savile Row house — Huntsman being the canonical example — works with a roped sleeve head and a pressed canvas that holds a precise architectural shape. The jacket announces itself before the wearer does. It is imposing.

The Neapolitan house — Kiton, Isaia — achieves softness through the spalla camicia construction at the shoulder seam, where the sleeve is sewn with a slight gather that produces an uninterrupted line. The softness is at the shoulder; the body of the jacket can still be shaped.

The Anderson & Sheppard drape achieves its effect through the cut of the cloth itself — the way the pattern is drawn, the proportions of the chest piece, the angle of the shoulder seam. The fullness is structural, built into the flat paper, not achieved through canvas manipulation. No other house cuts a jacket in quite the same way.

The Clientele as Argument

The Duke of Windsor, who dressed in Anderson & Sheppard for nearly six decades after his abdication, is the central figure in the house's mythology. This is not mere name association. Windsor was a man of genuine sartorial intelligence who chose A&S not for its prestige but for what it produced: a jacket that moved with him, that looked as good at the end of a long day as at the beginning, that required no adjustment and no conscious management.

Fred Astaire — who needed a jacket that would not restrict his arms at full extension and would read as clean and fluid on film rather than sharply tailored — was a client for the same reasons. The drape cut's fullness, which might seem an excess in a photograph, becomes, in motion, an absence of restriction. The camera confirmed what Anderson understood: that clothes should move.

Technique and Canvas

The Anderson & Sheppard canvas is a floating canvas — padstitched to the cloth but not pressed against it. The result, after wearing, is a jacket that has moulded itself to the wearer's specific body and movement patterns. This quality cannot be replicated by any amount of pressing or steaming in a structured jacket; it requires that the canvas be allowed to find its own position over time.

A new Anderson & Sheppard jacket may surprise a client accustomed to more structured houses: it looks, immediately, somewhat less precise. Within six months of wear, it looks like nothing else.

The Haberdashery

Anderson & Sheppard Haberdashery, at a separate address on Clifford Street, sells accessories — ties, braces, scarves, socks, handkerchiefs — under the A&S name and from a curated selection of British suppliers. This provides an entry point to the house for clients not yet ready to commit to a bespoke commission, and a reliable source for those who are.

The Current House

The house operates at 32 Old Burlington Street, a short walk from Savile Row proper. Head cutter John Hitchcock maintains a small team of experienced tailors. A bespoke commission currently requires approximately 18–24 months from first fitting to delivery — a waiting list that reflects both the quality of the demand and the limit of what a small, serious operation can produce.

FAQs

What does an Anderson & Sheppard bespoke suit cost? Bespoke suits begin at approximately £6,500–9,000 depending on cloth. The price reflects the labour intensity of hand-cut and hand-sewn construction.

Does the house offer made-to-measure? No. Anderson & Sheppard is bespoke only. There is no made-to-measure programme.